Putting community voices in the lead: a community-led conservation appraisal

By Rasha Rashid

In late 2022, TSIP worked with Toynbee Hall to evaluate their pilot programme which allowed local people to engage in the conservation appraisal process in the Wentworth street conservation area in East London.

A central drive of TSIP is putting communities and their lived experiences at the forefront of social impact change. Over the course of five months, we had the opportunity to practise these values while working with Toynbee Hall on London’s first ever community-led conservation area appraisal. This project spanned over a year and recruited nine local residents from the Wentworth Street area to conduct research for the conservation of their neighbourhood.

Typically, conservation is carried out by conservation experts or regulatory bodies that assess the characters and feel of the buildings and streets to determine the special value of the area. As this was the first community owned and community led conservation project the central question grounding this work was: Why is it important for the community to lead this process? 

Through TSIP’s evaluation of the community appraisers journey, we explored the emerging themes of community led conservation, the leading insights of their work, and developed a set of recommendations to follow. Below we share some of our learnings and reflect on the impact this project held to those involved. 

From our analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data the Community Appraisers provided– street and map-based surveys and archival research–and the learning and evaluation workshops TSIP facilitated with the group, we grouped our key insights into three overarching themes: power dynamics, knowledge and ownership, and public spaces and accessibility. 

Picture taken from the Archival research by Community Appraisers

1. Firstly, the rapidly changing nature of the area highlighted the power dynamics that local residents are navigating. As Wentworth street is next to the expanding financial hub of London, services and amenities being developed are responding to the needs of the transit communities (office workers, students, passer-bys) instead of the residents who have historically lived there. The prioritisation of these transit communities leaves residents feeling sidelined with their voices not being heard. This emphasises how these dynamics amid a changing landscape underpin the issue of regeneration - where local residents are not seen as capable of generating wealth for the area and thus everything is purposed for an outside demographic. Increasingly being unable to meet their needs within the bounds of their own neighbourhood, community appraisers find themselves having to travel elsewhere. The sense of displacement furthers the disconnect that many local residents are currently feeling. Community members instead hope to engage in a more collaborative, transparent relationship with transit communities and the council. The community appraisers note the irony and their frustration in this displacement given their long-standing presence in the area. From the archival research they conducted, community appraisers reflect on their relationship to the area, expressing a newfound appreciation.

2. This brings us to the second theme of knowledge and ownership–where community appraisers credit their research and data collection journey having deepened their sense of ownership and belonging. The rich history of the appraisal area was for many appraisers their first time learning about it, leading to contextualising their own history and time spent in the neighbourhood as part of its legacy. Subsequently, the appraisers wished to see their historical relationship with the area valued and reflected.   Moreover, it instilled a sense of community pride and desire to build and expand upon this sense of community. For example, appraisers stated that community members should have easier access to this history so that all local residents can feel connected to the area. Psychological Ownership Theory suggests that the more someone feels ownership towards their community, the more they will contribute to the community’s well-being. Indeed, appraisers expressed a stronger desire to contribute towards and be actively involved in their neighbourhood following their surveying and data collection.  

3. Finally, community appraisers mentioned how this community belonging should be accessible to all. Gathering together for camaraderie and change-making as they noted were limited as they don’t have the spaces or forums for it. The avenues that do currently exist may also not be friendly for elder populations or people without knowledge of how to access the community they seek. To circumvent these issues, the community appraisers during our learning sessions suggested measures from including more signage to creating communication channels for community members. The large desire to ensure that existing and new public spaces are accessible and feel welcoming to all members of the community became a central concern for the appraisers in their work moving forward. 

Throughout TSIP’s engagement with the Community Appraisers we captured learnings around the benefits of a community led appraisal and specifically interrogated what is the added value that community owned research brings to each step of the appraisal process–from data collection, analysis and insight gathering to reporting and presenting.

Picture taken by TSIP team of the final evaluation report

We found that community members hope to engage in a more collaborative, transparent relationship with transit communities and the council. And the knowledge and ownership that they have as members of the community, and in these relationships, should be properly valued and considered.

Being at the forefront of decision-making throughout this process created the opportunity for alternative social reproduction–empowered to be active in their local communities, community appraisers created spaces of identity formation, friendship, meaning and care all while working to preserve the historical areas that make them unique.   

We would like to say thank you to the Community Appraisers and the team at Toynbee Hall for bringing us with them on this journey and we look forward to seeing what they achieve in the future!